Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

29 Apr 2002, 16:56 p.m.

Much Logic silliness today. TA Peter this morning: "Semicolons…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Much Logic silliness today.

  • TA Peter this morning: "Semicolons are great, aren't they?"
  • To use a particular rule in our deductive system, we must make sure we're taking a conservative instance of the original schema. Labor doesn't much like this, I hear from my friends across the pond. (Neal Kinnock: "Why am I the first instance in a thousand years to imply an existentially quantified schema?")
  • Just because everybody loves somebody or other doesn't mean that some arbitrary person -- let's call him Joe -- loves himself. But he might! But he might not! Professor Warren acknowledged, "We don't know much about this guy."
  • The deduction seemed legal! "But our triumph is illusory," Professor Warren sadly pronounced.
  • Whenever a teacher talks about the necessity of eliminating premises, I feel like cackling. ("Eliminate them...permanently! Mwahahahaha!")
  • I made up a silly little filk and Jade and I laughed and sang it out loud at the end of class. To the tune of "That's Amore":

    If you know it's implied
    Then it can be deduced
    That's completeness
    If it can be deduced
    Then you know it's implied
    That's a-soundness...
    More later, probably.